


Laughter Isn’t Always Joyful

by KB_Tauros



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, but not really, warning: the dog dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 17:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13252905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KB_Tauros/pseuds/KB_Tauros
Summary: "Ridiculous - adj - absurdly or unbelievably good, bad, crazy, etc."Because sometimes we laugh at things that aren't funny as a way to cope, because they're ridiculous and there is no other way to react.





	Laughter Isn’t Always Joyful

**Author's Note:**

> This is for everyone who has ever laughed their way through the bad times, in the face of a situation that was absolutely Not Funny At All to the other people present at the time.
> 
> Preemptive apologies for the artistic liberties taken with how magic works and how definitions are used.

In 1993, Remus Lupin takes a roomful of children to face their fears and defeat a boggart. It is a valuable lesson, in more way than one.

Student after student steps up and dutifully cries, “Riddikulus!” forcing the nightmare to change shape into a flight of fancy. Peals of laughter echo in the small room, as classmates’ fears come to light and fade away as jokes. Some of them common, grounded things, others strangely specific, and even some outlandish, bordering on nonsensical before the spell is even cast.

One student gleefully goes to take her turn. The boggart - which had been a rubber duck with a foghorn quack moments before - shifts into one of its more mundane fears: a dead dog.

Or really, a not-quite dead dog. A very old hunting hound lay on the stone floor, still but for its sides, which labored through each rattling breath. Blood pooled beneath it, from what looked like a bullet wound to the side. The laughter of the students died far faster than the scene before them.

“R-Riddikulus–!” She manages, barely audible, both her voice and wand hand shaking.

The dog-boggart heaves a final sigh…and rolls over on its back.

What comes next is a terrible cracking noise as all four limbs bend backward toward the ground again and began to lift the body up. The fur begins to fall away like dust and the skin splits open under it. Black tendrils, inky and iridescent, snake out from the new seams, all turning toward the girl like heliotropes to light. Collectively, the other students step back.

Then the girl laughs. It is a loud, hollow sounding laugh, but forceful - from deep in her belly, with all the air in her lungs. The tentacles flinch. What was once a dog turns its upside down head to the side in confusion.

The girl continues laughing. She laughs until she doubles over, tears rolling down her cheeks. The boggart is quaking on the other side of the room, the monstrous tentacles shedding pieces that splatter on the floor like gelatin.

In a kneejerk reaction, a student pulls the undead dog’s owner back toward the safety of the class group by her robe’s hood. Another steps in front of her to force the boggart into a new form: a cliff over looking the ocean. With his Riddikulus, it becomes an elaborately ugly gelatin dessert, wiggling precariously, complete with strange rubbery sounds. Not hilarious, but at least normal. The class regains its footing after that, as though nothing happened. Not even Harry Potter, needing professorial interference, manages to derail it again.

The girl spends the rest of class crying in earnest; Professor Lupin’s ever present chocolate gains another grateful fan. Afterward, no one mentions the dog. 

But there are other moments in class that year, where someone laughs at a distasteful whispered joke, or a particularly strange thing in the text, and its just a bit too loud. The sound is too sudden, too jarring, even for the student who produces it, and everything around them screeches to a halt and is slow to resume.

But no one ever says anything. They know it now - the reason for laughter is not always joy. Unusual does not mean unnatural.  
And perhaps that was the real lesson, that day with the boggart: To be able to laugh in the face of adversity is a truly powerful weapon, even - or perhaps especially - if you might not be laughing for the reason you think.

But power was power. And with the darkening days that lay ahead, unbeknownst to them, the students can use every bit of it they can get.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this around midnight on a weeknight because I read someone's sad tags on a HP post on tumblr, and couldn't get the concept out of my head. A quick explanation of why I did what I did:  
> When I was very small, I had a deathly fear of The Monster Under My Bed and how I eventually got over it was by cleaning my room and finding out that there wasn't room for me to crawl under my bed, let alone a monster large enough to eat me. The concept of it was laughable, and I did laugh. The Monster Under My Bed never scared me again.
> 
> Thus: Unnamed Student knows her dog can't be the undead monster she's seeing, because her dog is not a monster; the very idea is Riddikulus. How silly!
> 
> Some logic their way out of fear. Some embrace the darker side of life to make fears softer. Some outright enjoy fear. To each their own.  
> People are strange, the world is stranger, and chocolate is good for everything.  
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
